Substitute Learner
by Arrowned
Summary: PRSPD: Jack and Sky argue over their positions within the team after a battle gone wrong. But will the deal they make to fix things solve their problems? Or will it cause more of them?
1. Twin Tensions

**Substitute Learner**

**Ch.**** 1 – Twin Tensions**

Disclaimer: I'm still flat broke, so I obviously still don't own Power Rangers.

Rating: M overall, though this chapter would've fit under T.

Note: This type of story has already been done plenty of times before, but I figured I'd try it anew because the conflict between Jack and Sky might very well make it work. Judging by how much better the Rangers put up with each other now, this story probably would fit best somewhere between Walls and Idol, preferably pre-Sam. Please forgive me if this story seems in any way raw or has mistakes; I tried to go over it and edit it where I could, but I don't have a beta reader yet, so it's a one man show for the time being. I was going to hold off uploading this until I could get someone to do the job, but I already have an overall plotline down for chapters 2 and 3, so I can't wait any longer. :P

* * *

Sky couldn't stop a cry of pain from escaping his lips as he slammed into the cement building with an audible crack. 

"Sky!" yelled Syd in fear as she parried a sword slice from the Orangehead, and then backflipped away from a second slash.

"I'm fine! The wall cracked, not my spine!" he replied as he slowly got to his feet and took stock of the situation. Syd and Jack were attempting to distract the Orangehead while a rush of terrified civilians tried to get out of the chaotic Parkington Market. Z was helping them escape. Besides Jack, she knew the area the best of the Rangers from her days of having to keep out of the way of overzealous cops while stealing for the homeless. She was temporarily unmorphed so she could make use of her clone abilities to direct the mass of people to the fastest escape routes. Bridge, on the other hand, was currently embroiled in a fight with a dozen Krybots. From the ridiculous amount of water splashing out of the nearby fountain and into the air, Sky didn't think it was going very well.

Sky winced as the monster kneed Jack in the gut and roundhouse kicked him away. Jack flew backwards with even more force than Sky had, punching a hole straight through a building and flying inside along with a cloud of dust and debris. He followed that up by ferociously slashing Syd with enough power to send her crumpling to the ground.

"Delta Max Striker!" Sky yelled as he connected the two parts of his weapon together and shot the monster in the stomach. The Orangehead went flipping sideways through the air and crashed into a nearby hotdog stand, sending gobbets of meat flying in all directions. Even after the acrobatics, Sky could vaguely see him through the mess, attempting to stand up to continue the fight. Sky took the few extra seconds the reprieve had given them to run over and haul Syd to her feet.

"Are you alright?" he asked, his mind half on her injuries and half on wondering what was taking so long for the other three members of the team to show up. Jack had taken harder hits than that before. Usually from Sky himself during holo-training.

"Give me some aspirin, a glass of water, Peanuts, my bed, and ten hours of sleep and I'll be fine," she grumbled as she formed her own Striker combo. Sky snorted. The two slipped into their usual fighting stances as the Orangehead, who was now covered in mustard, charged them. Before he could get to them, however, a deactivated Krybot flew through the air from their left and sent him sprawling. Sky and Syd turned to see Z waving as she ran up to them, finally morphed, with Bridge right behind her.

"It's about time!" Sky complained. Z shook her head.

"Next time, you can deal with stampeding crowds. Where's Jack?"

The focus of her conversation finally managed to pull himself from the wall's wreckage just then and stumble over to them.

"Bad day?" Bridge asked, sounding far too cheerful for the situation. Jack just grumbled. They all watched as the Orangehead picked up the Krybot body and threw it behind him.

"Bridge, those Krybots are robots, right?" Jack asked.

"That's pretty good Jack. And you didn't even have to stand on your head."

"Do they have some sort of power source inside them?" Jack barreled on, ignoring Bridge's probably unintentional taunt. "We never really aim for any specific spot when we usually blow them up."

"Maybe," Bridge replied slowly. "We don't have any blueprints on them or anything, and they tend to blow up without us doing much of anything, but I'd guess they'd run on small reactors or something. I don't remember seeing it in their chests when we'd break them open, so it's probably near their stomachs. Either that or in their butts."

Syd glanced at Bridge in such a way that the other Rangers knew she was gawking, even with her helmet hiding her face. "I am SO not gonna ask."

"We'll distract him then. Sky, hang back and get ready to hit that Krybot when I give the signal." Jack took off running with the other three on his trail while Sky ducked behind the nearest building, dropping to one knee and propping his Delta Max Striker against his shoulder. Sky frowned at being left behind again, but this time he had an idea of what Jack was going for, and didn't argue.

Sky was able to watch Rangers in action many times in the past, seeing as how his Dad was always running missions as one of the best. He was also used to his teammates by now, and the amount of times they constantly annoyed him with their little quirks had yet to wear off, which made it hard to appreciate anything Ranger-related that involved any of them. But at times like this, he couldn't keep himself from being awed at the abilities that the dedicated Ranger had at his or her disposal. With the four of them taking on the Orangehead at once instead of three of them fighting him one at a time, the odds were a lot better. Even so, the creature was putting up an intense fight, throwing attacks that kept the Rangers on their toes while trying to hit him. Despite that, he was fast enough to dodge all of their own attacks, and watching the whole thing in motion was like looking at an elaborate dance. Jack had just managed to throw himself to the ground to dodge a vicious horizontal swipe. He jumped back up and threw himself into a spinning kick, which the Orangehead flipped away to dodge. The villain landed neatly in between Bridge and Syd, who started tag-teaming him while Z was taking random shots at him from where she had been standing before. Jack pulled out his Delta Blasters and followed her lead. The Orangehead, figuring that he was taking too many close calls from the blasters, jumped even farther backwards, toward the fountain Bridge had been fighting in earlier.

Jack, noticing that they were close enough to get things going, screamed "Go! Go!" and rushed the Orangehead, dropping all pretenses and throwing an insane amount of punches and kicks. Z, Syd, and Bridge hopped right in, and the Orangehead, overwhelmed, but backed into a corner, could do nothing but fend off their attacks.

Sky, figuring that it was time for his contribution, began to line up his shot, aiming directly for the stomach of the downed Krybot. This was going to be a difficult shot. A spigot from the fountain had broken off in the melee and water was spraying all over the place. In addition, the way the Krybot had landed when thrown earlier had its limbs splayed across its body like a pretzel. And then, over in the corner...

"Now Sky! Hit it!" Jack yelled.

"Wait! There's a..."

"NO! There's no time! Do it now! Guys, get down, now!" Jack ran forward a ways and flung himself to the ground, with Z and Bridge right behind him. Syd gave the Orangehead a parting kick in his face that he predictably dodged, but it sent him backwards towards the Krybot. Sky clenched his teeth, and waited for Syd to hit the dirt.

He took the shot.

* * *

"Thankfully, the B-Squad Rangers managed to get all of the civilians off the scene before the battle finished. However, the minor blast the monster produced on his defeat acted as a catalyst, causing several Dithyrion energy accumulators to go up in flames. This, in effect, caused a quarter of the market to disappear in the resulting explosion. Space Patrol Delta is currently working with the Bureau of..." The news report vanished from the screen as Jack hit the power button on the remote and leaned back in the chair in Bridge and Sky's room and scowled. 

"Well, at least we got everyone out of there before it happened," Bridge supplied.

"That doesn't make it any easier to deal with," Jack replied. "At least we're not catching the blame for all that nonsense."

"Yeah, I suppose that would be a good thing." Sky muttered, attempting to read his SPD handbook.

Jack glanced over in his direction, frowned, and raised an eyebrow. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

Sky glanced over at him and raised an eyebrow. "I mean that if you had bothered to keep all of your options open to begin with then you wouldn't have blown up half the market!"

Jack stood up and glared at Sky. He wasn't pleased. "Excuse me? I wasn't the one that took the shot in the first place, Mr. Perfect!"

"I wasn't going to take that shot." Sky countered, dropping the book onto his bed and stepping straight up to Jack. "I saw those containers, but you started screaming your head off to get me to do it anyways!"

Bridge just stared at them with a horrified look on his face. He thought they had solved the problems between each other a few missions ago, but apparently not. The tension between them was so thick that he could physically feel it with his gloves still on.

Jack's volume dropped as he looked at Sky with an expression full of contempt. "And I bet that you could've handled that situation so much better than me had you been controlling it from the start, huh?"

Sky matched his level, giving the flaming hot confrontation a sudden injection of ice. "I'm sure I could have. Easily."

"And what do you intend to do about it then?" Jack asked, with his arms crossed. Sky stared at him for a moment longer, then pulled his morpher out of his holster and held it towards Jack.

"We switch."

The scornful look on Jack's face cracked for a second as what Sky suggested sunk in. "You must be joking."

"Not at all. We switch morphers. Kat didn't say anything about them being keyed to our bodies when she gave them to us, so it shouldn't be a problem."

Bridge dropped his jaw. "Are you two insane! What's gonna happen when we get out into the battlefield and Cruger sees you with the wrong colors on? He's gonna go ballistic!"

"He'll never know," Sky answered, still not looking anywhere else but directly at Jack. "I've seen those data tapes when I ran console work for A-Squad, and they don't zoom in on the actual battles all that well too often. And Cruger's supposed to be heading off to take care of one of the SPD sub-groups off-planet, right? We'll just switch back before he returns."

There was a long moment of absolute silence as the two males stared each other down, with Bridge silently watching on. Finally, Jack pulled out his morpher, and they made the trade.

"Alright. Let's see how well you can handle the pressure." Jack taunted, slipping the #2 B-Squad morpher into his belt.

"I'll handle it just fine. Don't worry yourself over it." Sky replied, putting his new morpher away.

"And what are you three up to?" Syd asked as she and Z peeked their heads into the room. Jack and Sky turned towards the girls with identical expressions of calm. Bridge just sighed.

"Nothing." The two simultaneously answered. Z raised an eyebrow, picking up on Jack's body language from the times when the two were living together on the streets and knowing something was up, but she knew there wasn't any time to discuss it.

"Kat needs us for a second debriefing," she explained.

"A second one? What was wrong with the first?" Jack asked, sounding annoyed. The grilling he took from Kat over the entire episode was tremendous, for obvious reasons.

"Not over the battle," Syd explained. "She wants our opinions on Gruumm's attacking the market this time. It did come pretty out of the blue, and there's some unanswered questions about his tactics."

Sky and Jack got to their feet and walked past Syd and Z out the door, heading toward the command center. Syd glanced at Bridge.

"Any idea what that was about?"

"Not a clue," Bridge said as he went about straightening his bed with an odd, scrunched-up expression on his face. Syd raised an eyebrow and looked towards Z.

"Can't tell for sure myself," Z replied, answering her silent question. "I know something's up though. Jack's got this sort of posture he goes into when he's pissed, and he was completely riled up that time. Must be about the fight."

"Hmm," Syd replied, noncommittally. "Let's hope they get it ironed out before the next time we go into battle; I'm not gonna be the one that has to pull them off of each other when we're in the middle of a Krybot gang." Syd rolled her eyes as she and Z left the room, following the two men at a respectable distance. Bridge, walking a few feet behind the girls, grimaced.

"Maybe I should call in sick before we go out there again."


	2. Interference

**Substitute Learner**

**Chapter 2 - Interference**

Disclaimer: The unnamed D-level cadets, Commander Bradshaw, the monster, and Dr. Hodges are mine. Everything else is owned by Disney/Village Roadshow Productions.

Note: I'm doing this all without a beta reader. Horrible thing to do, but I can't FIND one. I can understand, because beta reading is a time consuming job, though I'd be happy to exchange duties with someone if they wanted. But anyways, all I have to go on is my own spelling/grammatical sense, the opinions of a few people at Rangerboard, and one of my friends who likes to write, so be prepared.

**

* * *

**

Syd crawled on her stomach through the knee-high grass. Within the whistling blades, she was barely able to catch a flash of blue two dozen meters ahead. Slowly and quietly, she reached back to the side of her uniform belt, pulled out her morpher, and switched it to Communications mode.

"Bridge, they're up ahead. Exactly where you said they'd be." She grimaced as one specific gnat that had been pestering for several minutes straight buzzed around her head again.

"Can you see how many there are?" Jack threw in. Syd glanced back to the wildflower bush a ways back that Jack was trying to hide behind. The red on his outfit matched a little with the roses, but the rest of his color scheme made him stand out pretty badly. Syd didn't imagine she blended in any better though, with her outfit's pink lining in bright green grass. Thankfully, they were in the middle of a massive jungle, and the three of them were hard to see regardless, due to gigantic trees all over the place. Bridge, who would've been tougher to see in the grass, was too busy propped upside-down against an oak tree facing the other direction while he tried to figure out what their targets were doing.

"Just the two of them. Looks like they haven't brought anyone else to the party."

"Good. Get ready to get the drop on them. I wanna take them out fast."

"Are you sure we're gonna be able to take them out fast without any powers?" Bridge asked through the comm. channel, flipping back to his feet and immediately dropping to the grass in a position identical to Syd's.

"Sure we can. These guys are no big deal." Jack answered, peeking up above his bush to watch the two targets slowly amble their way through the shrubs in their way.

"Speaking of no powers, why did we do this simulation that way anyways? No civilian powers I can understand, though that didn't make it any easier to find these two. But no morphing once we found them?"

"You just want to morph so you won't get as dirty."

"Darn right," Syd replied, attempting to knock another fly out of the air ahead of her, and missing with a mile to spare. "But you didn't answer my question."

"Man, one track mind." Jack grumbled as he used his binoculars to sight in on the targets. They were setting up some kind of device. He couldn't tell what it was or what it was supposed to do. "Sky and I decided that we needed to focus more on fighting unmorphed so we can get used to it, in case we lose our powers temporarily or something like that."

"You and Sky decided that." Syd blinked, and then turned her head towards Jack's hiding spot. "Does that mean that you ironed out whatever your problem was the other day?"

"What problem? We didn't have a problem."

Bridge grunted and jumped back in the conversation. "I don't know what the two of them are doing; we should probably check into it."

"Sure. Let's move ou... wait a minute. Syd, take a look again. I thought I saw something new."

Syd crept forward a bit and stared in the direction of their targets. The flash of blue she had seen earlier seemed to have multiplied into five flashes of blue... and one sliver of yellow.

"Looks like they brought friends after all. I see six targets altogether. I think the others are trying to set something up."

"Well they can do it their way; I'm doing it mine. Let's do this!" Jack launched himself from behind his hiding spot and pulled out his uniform blaster, sending a spray of shots in the direction of the now visible group of Blueheads. Syd and Bridge scrambled out behind him, shooting at the Blueheads as fast as they could.

From behind the Blueheads, Sky and Z popped out of their hiding places, each heading in a different direction, trying to circle around the bots. Sky took several shots at the enemy that was manning the device, and the Bluehead flipped out of the way. Z, with the open shot, blasted the squarish box and sent it up in flames, then started joining Syd and Bridge in laying lasers down over the bots' heads to keep them from running off too far.

Jack flipped over near Sky and joined him in firing at the bot that seemed to be leading the brigade. "Nice of you to join us."

"Would've been nicer if you hadn't come with guns blazing. I was about to take down all four of them at the same time," Sky grumbled as he knocked one of the enemies backwards into the bole of a tree. The robot, however, wasn't much damaged, and took off running; the two men gave chase.

"And what fun would that have been?" Jack replied as the bot let them on a circular chase through the jungle. The two Rangers, having just been joined by the rest of their team, were hard-pressed to keep up, but the Bluehead didn't seem to be leading them into any sort of trap, so they followed its movements. It led them around the edges of the miniature battle first, and then right back into the other group of robots.

Sky looked over at Jack with an annoyed look on his face, but before he could say anything further, a sudden shaking sent all the Rangers and Blueheads to the ground.

"What's up with this?" yelled Z as she attempted to pick herself back up. Another earthquake stopped her attempt in mid-motion, sending her tumbling back to the puddle she was standing over.

"Wait, water?" Z blinked and looked around. The jungle they were fighting in had transformed itself. They now seemed to be underground, in a city sewer system, with bushes and grass still growing out of the cement. Puddles of mucky liquid were scattered around the area. Trees were still standing tall in the gushing water, and when they were higher than the room itself, distortion waves could be seen where the branches and ceiling merged.

"What in the world is this?" Jack sent a blaster bolt into a Bluehead's face and backed away towards where the other Rangers were congregating, Bridge helping Z stand back up.

"I'm guessing that holowall bug popped back up," Bridge responded with a groan.

"Wait, you've seen this before?" Sky glanced over at the Blueheads. They had all gathered together in a spot some distance from the Rangers and had seemingly shut down, heads bowed, though blue electricity traveling up and down their bodies suggested something was still going on.

"Yeah; it first happened a few weeks ago. The holowalls between two history simulations, an interactive 1700's US class and a pre-history Neanderthal one, dissolved, and the two simulations merged. Suddenly E-level students were fighting alongside Americans against cavemen and British armies in the Independence War."

Z snorted at the ridiculousness of the idea. "You guys didn't manage to fix it after it happened then?"

"We thought we did. Guess not." Bridge glanced around at the changes, and then looked at the Blueheads. They had finished their 'shock therapy' and now seemed to be checking the ammo level in their hand rifles.

"So what in the world did we merge with?" Jack asked.

"Hey, what's going on over here?" cried a voice from across one of the sewer pipes. The Rangers turned and looked to see a group of eight D-level trainees come running through the pipes with full out laser recognition gear on.

"Oh god," Syd said, immediately realizing what was happening.

"Where did you guys come from?" Sky asked the trainees. The one in the lead, a young female, answered him.

"We were having a lightball melee in an underground simulation. What's happening?"

Before any of the B-squad members could give an answer, the Blueheads all charged forward, yelling, aiming their hand rifles and firing off at the 13 people, forcing them to scatter. But instead of general lasers coming out, a barrage of lightballs fired from the tips of their cannons.

"You have got to be kidding me!" Z yelled as she flipped to the side, along with Bridge. Upon landing, Bridge took cover behind a large thorn bush with a mesh of pipes in front of it and pulled out his morpher. Checking it, he then yelled loud enough for everyone to catch him.

"Guys, this modified simulation has us in a three way lightball tournament in here; B-Squad vs. D-squad vs. Blueheads! Our civilian powers are go again though."

"Someone deactivate this nonsense!" Sky backed far enough way from the clash in the middle of the sewer/forest to get out of the way of the sudden onslaught.

"Are you kidding me? This is mad cool!" yelled Jack as he threw himself into the most crowded part of the fight with an ecstatic whoop, chucking lightballs at the trainees and Blueheads as fast as he could pick them up from where the lay randomly on the ground. The trainees and Blueheads immediately scattered, with the Blueheads following their new programming and targeting everyone on the field, and the trainees flinging themselves into the middle of the action with excited cries. Syd, always one of the first of the team to toss herself into anything fun, followed the Blueheads' lead and started firing a mass of lightballs out of her hand blaster. Z and Bridge glanced at each other, shrugged, and then charged into the midst of the screaming D-level trainees with a dual battle cry worthy of Tarzan himself.

Sky had gone through enough problems with Jack in the last week to have been put in a permanent bad attitude, and even now he was tired of the leader's constant ability to jump into the thick of things without thinking. Some of the tactical choices he had made in the simulation today had Sky severely annoyed. But as hard as Sky was trying to keep his ill mood intact, the silly, ear-to-ear grin on Jack's face as he rampaged through the thick of the Blueheads was so wide that Sky couldn't help but snerk in response.

"The heck with it," he said as he jumped into the melee himself, going after Jack of course, despite the fact that they were on the same team.

The battle was intense, but it was also surprising. The Rangers were staying in the game quite effectively, having fought Blueheads many a time and being used to their general strategies. The Blueheads themselves, along with the change in programming brought on by the game, had ceased their hand-to-hand fighting techniques, and were simply going for mass fire tactics. The D-level trainees lost two members to sudden lightball barrages, mainly from Jack, Syd, and Z, but due to playing Lightball far more often than the Rangers, they were successfully holding their own.

Within twenty minutes, they had all broken into separate groups. The six D-level players had formed two parties, one with three girls and one guy, and another with two guys. They had split and were stationed on the far edges of the battlefield, taking potshots at anything that crossed their fields of vision. Jack, Syd, Z, and Bridge were doing a sort of rubber band dance near the area's center, dashing away from each other to go after individual targets, but quickly grouping back together to make use of the large foliage sticking out of a few drain holes for coverage. They did use their powers where they could, but besides Z making occasional distractions, there wasn't much use for their abilities. Syd's powers were nigh useless, and there were too many targets for Bridge to successfully track. Jack used his phasing only for ducking through bushes less he get yelled at for cheating. The four Blueheads had split up and were individually running around sectors of the battle, taking shots where they could. Sky was off by himself, staying high up, but only within the metallic trees that still had branches to hide in and hadn't lost them to the merge. He was making his way to different spots on the field and used the vantage points to lay down the occasional burst of high lightball fire when his teammates were coming close to getting trapped. Any stray lightballs that came at him before he could move to another tree could easily be deflected with a snap force field, but like Jack and his phasing, he kept that to a minimum.

At one point, with Syd and Z pinning the two D-level boys down against a forest of interlocking bushes and bricks near the arena's edge, a door to the Simudeck room opened, and Kat and Boom ran in. Out of the corner of her eye, Syd saw motion from one of the Blueheads, and screamed "Kat! Boom! Duck!"

Kat dropped to the floor with a hiss, and yelled "Holomode deactivation, authorization Theta Swan Fifty-Eight!" A furious blur of lightballs stormed over her head. Boom, who didn't manage to get out of the way in time, was hit full in the face with four lightballs in a row, and screamed his way through a very neat triple backflip, landing on his stomach in a puddle of sewer water. The water disappeared immediately, however, as the entire simulation finally dissolved, revealing the clinical whites of the idle Simudeck. Still face-planted on the floor, with Kat leaning down to help him up, Boom muttered, "Why did I wake up today again?"

* * *

Bridge sat down at the mess hall table with a sigh and leaned back into his seat. Training sessions were always more difficult for him than anyone else, since he was picking up on other people's emotions during the fights. Normally he could handle it fine with four other Rangers and a bad guy or two, but filtering out seventeen mental processes at once was a bit much. Bridge grinned though; it had been fun, despite the constant outside sensations. 

Before he could make a respectable headway on the chunk of meat that he still couldn't identify, even after eating it at the academy for several years, Z and Syd joined him at the table. Z plopped down beside him, dropping her plate to the table. Syd took the other side of the table, and laid her food down before pulling a band out of her pocket and tying her hair back.

"Hey guys," Bridge said. Z muttered a reply, but she was too busy staring at the jiggling purple... thing on Bridge's plate to really form a proper response. She glanced up at Bridge with a raised eyebrow.

"What? It looked interesting," he said, taking his fork and spearing a chunk off the edge of it.

"That's exactly why I left it alone." she replied, shaking her head and digging into her macaroni and cheese.

"Where's Sky and Jack anyways?" Syd asked as she started into a large pile of casserole. Bridge and Z grinned and watched as she quickly dropped her fork, squealed through her closed lips in pain, furiously waved her hand towards her mouth, and then downed almost an entire glass of water.

"You know Princess, when you see the steam floating off the top, that usually means that it's just a teensy bit hot," Z joked. Syd just glared and started on the applesauce she had chosen as a side instead.

"Sky's on a video call with his mom. No idea where Jack's at," Bridge said, answering Syd's earlier question.

"I'm kind of glad they're not here. Their little spats are starting to get insane," Z said as she poked her fork around her macaroni.

"Bridge, you're with them much more often than we are. Or with Sky at least. What in the world is going on with those two?"

Bridge mentally cursed the dueling duo for putting him in this position a second time. Bridge was empathic by nature, and openly friendly to everyone. He hated keeping secrets from anyone, especially his teammates. And especially secrets with reasonings as idiotic as this one. He sighed.

"They're having issues with each other again. But it's not a big thing. At least, I don't think it is. It looks like they're getting over it. I can't tell for certain though. But everything's fine. Really."

Syd and Z glanced at each other. Bridge rambled for one of two reasons: either he had gone off track, or he was nervous, and he was obviously paying pretty close attention to their conversation. Before they could question him further, however, his morpher bleeped. He pulled it out and held it up.

"Bridge here." Kat's voice filtered across the link.

"Sorry to call in the middle of your lunch hour, but do you have some spare time? The Simudeck error is running amuck again; we still need help locking it down." A sharp scream from Boom had Bridge wondering what holoprograms had merged this time.

"Yeah, I'll be there in a bit." Bridge stood up, put his morpher back into its holster, and grabbed his tray. "Gotta go; I'll catch you guys later."

They watched as he walked through the doors back into the main corridors. Z smiled at Syd. "How convenient."

Syd laughed. "Tell me about it. Why is it every time we try and get a proper answer from someone on this, we get the runaround?"

"The boys are in league with Gruumm, obviously. They're just trying to keep it from us."

"What, to keep us from joining them? I can see it now; B-Squad turns evil! Headlines on papers all across the US!" Syd spread her arms in a gesture to make her point, a grin stretched across her face.

"And where would YOU have read that one? Miro? Cosmo?"

Syd pouted. "Nice."

"I thought so," Z replied with a chuckle, and went back to her food.

"So what do you think?"

"About the whole Jack/Sky thing? They probably have the hots for each other. We should just lock them in a closet one of these days."

"I was being serious," Syd complained, although the mental image Z's comment had produced planted a wide smirk on her face.

Z sighed and pushed her tray forward as she thought about it. "It probably is something minor. Just some little argument that the two got into and have taken overboard. But I've known Jack for years now, and, well... he has this tendency to go too far when he gets angry."

"What do you mean?" Syd asked, now rather interested. The original trio already knew the general pieces of Jack and Z's street-thief history, but every so often, the two would drop new tidbits of info when they were retelling the story.

"Well, I don't know all the details, because I was off running a side job for him at the time, but Jack had gotten into an argument with another thief we knew back then. Like us, but he was the kind of person that knew he was doing a service for everyone and wanted to be recognized for it. Like a, well..."

"Pompous jerk?" Syd suggested.

"Exactly. Jack, of course, didn't like that, and the two started arguing, and they eventually dared each other into a large job."

"What happened?"

"Cops. Jack only got away because of his powers; he shifted through a couple of walls and ran for it. The other guy got taken in; we haven't seen him since."

Syd leaned back and frowned. "And you think Jack might have done something like that with Sky?"

"It's pretty likely. But it took Jack two years before he finally told me the full story, so I doubt we'll get anything out of him about whatever this is. You think you can con Sky into dropping some info?"

"Not in this lifetime. You know how closed up Sky can get when he thinks someone's pushing up against his walls," Syd answered as she rose to drop the trash on her tray into a nearby garbage can.

"Well, at least we probably don't have to worry about it getting in the way of getting our job done. As foolish as those two can be sometimes, you can't say that they're not loyal to the cause."

Syd nodded as they left, but, despite usually being the one to cheer up others, she didn't feel quite as optimistic about the situation this time around.

* * *

The next few days found the Rangers going throughout their normal lives without any real alterations. No-one had heard a peep out of Gruumm since before Cruger had left, which had quite a few members of SPD antsy, but everyone was taking advantage of the downtime. The Simudeck bug had finally been permanently fixed, although the Rangers ran the same tournament simulation with the D-level trainees on occasion, since they enjoyed it so much. General base maintenance for the month was already complete, and the Rangers had been doing almost as much training as Sky, Syd, and Bridge had when they had first started 'boot camp'. The tension between Jack and Sky never seemed to let up, however. Bridge ignored it. Z and Syd, who still had reservations, gave the boys the benefit of the doubt since they were keeping their priorities in the right place. 

The ball finally dropped about a week and a half later. Kat was in the command center running a diagnostic on the Delta Command Crawler data routes; Jack was nearby, sitting in Cruger's chair and browsing through info on some of the planets Gruumm had already taken. A sudden comm. call grabbed their attention. Kat patched it through to the monitor of the terminal she was working at, and Jack walked up behind her. They found themselves looking at the face of a grizzled, dark-haired man in what looked like his fifties.

"Commander Bradshaw, what can I do for you?" Kat asked. The commander-in-chief of Newtech City's standard police force glanced down off screen for a second, presumably at notes he had in front of him.

"I've just received word of a murder over at Salion Research Center. Witnesses on scene say they saw a large alien creature leaving the site with a piece of technology he took from the victim on hand. More your jurisdiction than mine; would you be interested in taking a look?"

"Very much so. I'll have our Rangers down there in just a few minutes." Kat nodded at him, signed off, and glanced at Jack. Jack immediately turned and went for the room's exit, looking back over his shoulder at her.

"I'll round up the others; we'll head right down there."

* * *

Twenty minutes later, the five Rangers were stepping past police tape and walking up to the crowd of officers and paramedics on the site. Jack walked up to the nearest paramedic and flashed the badge in his morpher. 

"SPD; we're here to take a look at what happened."

The man beckoned them forward and dropped to his knees in front of the sheet. He silently pulled it forward a bit, letting the Rangers have a look. Jack grimaced; Bridge squinted his eyes shut and groaned. Z closed her eyes and shook her head, and Syd turned to the side with her hand over her mouth, trying to keep her stomach in control. Sky kept his eyes on the sight, but his gaze was steely, and his crossed arms had tensed up.

Murder wasn't a proper term for what they saw. The body under the cover was a charred, blackened skeleton, with its limbs splayed out, and missing its skull. Bits and pieces of the skeleton had disintegrated, including the fingers and toes. It was probably a woman, judging from the size of the pelvis bone, but it was hard to tell thanks to the hip itself being cracked into six pieces and broken off from the torso. Other major sections of joint had dissolved as well, leaving its arms and legs lying separate from the main body. The ground underneath the skeleton for about ten feet outwards was stained dark red and was charred black was well, with occasional green spots. The entire ensemble was still slightly smoking.

"Where's its..." Bridge couldn't even finish the question. The medic pointed over in another direction; a smaller cover was laying over a lumpish object a few feet away.

"Does anyone have any idea what happened here?" Sky threw in. The medic stood back up and sighed.

"We have a couple of eyewitnesses scattered around that say an alien jumped in out of nowhere, threw the woman to the ground, and pinned her there, pulling some kind of device away from her. Then they saw a bright flash of light, and the monster was gone after that, with the woman still on the ground, and on fire. The fire had to be unnatural, because they claim she was totally gone within 20 to 30 seconds. Either that, or the monster used some kind of catalyst, which would possibly explain the liquid left over." He pointed to the pale green splotches on the ground amidst the blood stains. "Our chemist techs are still looking into that though."

"And who was this woman?" Z asked, kneeling down and peering at the green puddle closest to her.

"We took DNA samples from what little was left of her marrow. She was a scientist over in Iridium Inc., named Kara Hodges. I have a copy of all the info we could get on this," he said, handing a datacard to Jack.

"Thanks for the help." Jack nodded at him, and the medic headed for a group of police officers standing nearby.

"Nasty piece of business," Syd muttered, rubbing her arms.

"What do you guys think?" Bridge asked everyone.

"Obviously that monster wanted this girl's device pretty badly. I wonder what it was," Sky responded.

"But why in the world would the monster have murdered her if all he wanted was the device? He could've just taken it and left," Jack said.

"And if he had to kill her, he didn't have to do it so brutally," Z added, glancing up at Jack. "You think this is a taunt or something?"

"No, but I do think there's more to this than 'kill the girl and steal her technology'."

"We should probably head back to base," Syd contributed. "We can check up on the woman's backtrail there. Not much more we can do here at any rate. I'd really not rather look at that any longer than I have to."

"No arguments there." Jack pocketed the datacard and lead the others back to their waiting Patrol Jeep and Cycles.

* * *

Bridge finished typing, hit the enter key, and peered at the screen. A wealth of info suddenly flooded across his monitor. 

"Got something."

Sky leaned back from his terminal against the command center wall and glanced at Bridge. "What did you find?"

"Ms. Hodges was working on a prototype locked access teleportation box. Looks like it'd be used to teleport and item to or from the place where the box was sitting."

Sky frowned. "What good would that do? Teleportation of items is commonplace now."

"It'd do a lot of good if the person didn't want anyone else messing with the process or diverting the item somewhere else. The box itself is keyed to the user's DNA and wouldn't let anyone else into the controls. The teleportation field itself would be half forcefield too. So basically, no-one could get at whatever is being teleported until the process was done."

"I don't like the sound of that. That monster could drop a bomb on us and we couldn't do a thing about it. And there's no way to shut the device down without the user's DNA?"

"Not that I know of, but I'm sure Ms. Hodges would've put in a failsafe somewhere. Governments don't like things like this running around without them being able to access it somehow. But she hadn't actually finished building the thing yet; it was a prototype the monster took. And I don't see any access codes in her records at the company."

"So if there is a failsafe, we don't know it." Sky grunted and considered his options. Jack still thought the monster had something else planned other than just using the item, and he was out hunting the streets for some of his old contacts to get ideas. He had said he would ask Piggy what he knew too, but Sky wasn't really anticipating any incredible brainstorms from that direction.

Syd and Z were out tracing the monster's physical trail. He didn't have any qualms about Jack sending them after the monster alone; he knew from years of partnering with her and Bridge that Syd, despite her princess persona, could take her of herself just fine. And Z had shown she was on a level of her own after fighting him to a standstill in almost every training simulation where they went up against each other. But with that device handy, there was no telling what that monster would do.

They could stay and try and look for more information, but it was pretty clear what the monster's immediate plan was, even if his overall intentions were unclear. Jack wouldn't really need any help for whatever it was he was trying to do by asking around.

"Let's go take the cycles and catch up with the girls," Sky decided, logging off his terminal. Bridge followed suit, and they took off for the secure parking area downstairs.

* * *

The girls pulled into an abadoned warehouse's lot and parked. Hopping out of their jeep, they pulled their blasters out of their holsters and started forward, stepping quietly. 

"You know," Syd whispered, "one of these days we need to set up cameras in all these old warehouses, because they're the only places monsters ever set up shop anyways." Z grinned and peeked around a cement corner towards the side of the building the entrance was on.

"If we go that way, we'll walk right into a trap..."

"Probably. Is there another entrance to this place?" Syd asked, glancing around.

"There's bunches. We just need one that that guy's not looking at." Z immediately popped out three clones which took off in different directions. Before she could do anything further though, her morpher started bleeping.

"Z here," she said into it.

"Where are you two at?" came Bridge's voice in reply.

"Warehouse B14 at Diatonic Industries. That monster is here; we're just trying to find a quiet way in."

A shifting behind them had Syd and Z whirling and pointing blasters, but it was Jack creeping up to them.

"What the... how in the world did you even know where we were?" Syd looked annoyed as she holstered her blaster again. Jack just grinned.

"Piggy told me he had heard of something going on out this way a day or two ago. He didn't really tell me anything else useful though," he replied as he knelt against the wall next to them."

"You guys alright?" Bridge asked.

"Jack just hooked up with us. We're heading in; let us know when you get here." Z put her morpher away.

"Found an entrance?" Syd asked. Z pointed to a set of stairs leading up to a high ledge along the edge of the roof.

"There's a maintenance door up there with no alarms other than the company ones." she replied. One of her clones could be seen up there, giving a thumbs up before disappearing in a muted yellow flash.

"And how are we gonna get through without setting off the company alarms missy?" Jack asked.

"That's your job, isn't it?"

Jack just glared.

Thirty seconds later, they were inside the building, crouched on a catwalk near the ceiling. Syd and Z were using binoculars to look down at the ground level where the monster was messing with the device. Jack was leaning back against the wall, breathing hard.

"Geez, you guys are heavy!" he said, receiving a smack on the back of his head from both girls simultaneously for his troubles. In order to sneak them in, Jack had grabbed their arms and phased all three of them through the wall, something he didn't do very often. The energy it took to carry people with him through a solid surface increased by a much higher factor than normal, and it tired him out rather fast. As long as he didn't have to carry the whole team through in a situation like that, though, he was usually back on his feet within just a few minutes.

"Hush Jack." Syd zoomed in on the monster's hands. He was fiddling with the box, but it seemed more like he was just looking at it rather than actually trying to use it.

"Jack, you said that monster might have an ulterior motive?" Syd asked.

"Maybe. Why?" Jack had finally caught his breath and crawled up to railing beside the girls.

"Because he's seriously acting like he doesn't know what the teleporter even is," Z answered. Jack blinked and took a look for himself. The monster had put the machine on the ground and was now prodding its side with a fingernail.

"Wonderful. So if that whole murder was a distraction, then what was it a distraction for?" Before Jack could get an answer of any type, the monster raised its eyebrows in surprise, and looked right at them. He then took off running at high speed through the interior of the warehouse.

"Shoot! After him!" Jack yelled, phasing right through the floor of the catwalk. Z and Syd threw annoyed glances at each other, and went for the stairs. By the time they reached ground level, Jack already had a bit of a lead on them, and the monster had an even bigger lead on him. The monster increased his lead dramatically, however, by pulling four Krybot spheres and tossing them behind him as he went, creating an effective 90-person roadblock that stopped Jack cold.

Z hung back as Syd tore ahead to help Jack. Pulling out her morpher, she raised Bridge on her morpher. "Where are you guys at?"

"We're just pulling into the warehouse lot now. What's going on?"

Z glanced up at the fight. Jack and Syd had fallen into what the Rangers had termed their 'whoop butt, think later' mode, something they did on occasion when the odds were a bit too high. What they did was stay unmorphed, but fight purely on instinct, and at the same time, using their powers as much as possible, almost to the point of overkill. Jack was phasing every two seconds, and no Krybot could even land a punch on him, though he took each solid second to knock at least one bot down. Syd had turned her hands into stone and was throwing fists every which way. Her hairband had come loose at some point, a tornado of blonde spinning around as she tore into the Krybots next to her with a potent fury.

"Krybot trap. Almost a hundred of them. The monster took off right after they appeared. We need help getting these guys out of the way ASAP. Come quick."

"We'll be there in a minute or two," Bridge said, before singing off. Z stretched her powers to the limit and painfully forced out seven clones, then let herself fall into her own rage. The fighting became so furious that she couldn't even keep track of where her teammates were or how many enemies were left or how long she had been fighting. All she knew was a series of attacks; jumping over a sweep from one Krybot and flattening herself horizontal in midair to dodge an overhead kick from another, rolling across the floor past three Krybots who tried to stomp her as she went, spinning around and knocking the feet out from under two more, throwing a punch forward into the sternum of one bot while kicking back against the knees of another.

She blinked out of her intensity what felt like three hours later when Bridge plowed into three Krybots that were about to jump on her from behind. Sky vaulted in front of 15 more and put up a wall that bounced them backwards, quickly easing the odds. With all five Rangers together and fighting furiously, it only took another five minutes before all the Krybots had been dismantled.

"C'mon, after that freak!" Jack yelled, and they all went running deep into the warehouse, panting all the way. They finally found him a few seconds later, and he was setting up the device as if he actually knew how to work it this time.

"Stop! SPD!" yelled Sky. The monster turned and fired a blast of energy towards them; the Rangers all rolled out of the way.

"I think it's time we turned it up a notch," Sky said in Jack's direction. Jack glanced back at him and quirked a lip.

"Sounds like a plan. Ready!" he yelled, holding his morpher in position.

"Ready!" came the follow up cry.

"SPD! Emergency!" Flashes of bright light banded across the area and reflected off pipes, ducts, and equipment across the warehouse floor. The monster, who hadn't been told quite what to expect, had to shield his eyes from the visual onslaught. When the light show finished, he opened his eyes and glanced at the newly morphed Rangers.

He blinked.

Bridge, for his part, took a look to his right, and put his head in his hands, groaning.

Z had her head raised towards the sky, with a look of long-suffering the others could just imagine.

Syd just stood slack-jawed for a second, before managing to regain her senses. "PLEASE tell me this is a big joke."

Sky, on the far right of the ensemble, stepped forward in the SPD Red spandex, the large number 1 on his outfit seeming to shine even brighter than normal. "Glare later people. Let's get to it."

Jack, still in the middle, wearing the SPD Blue outfit, and wearing it several inches shorter than its normal occupant, snorted. "Whatever you say boss."


End file.
